One Church (Acts 2) 1- Unified in the Bible

Man, I absolutely love that song, Jesus Be the Name, because that is what we're here to do, is to worship Jesus Christ as our risen King and Savior.

And so I am jacked up.

My name is Chris Durham.

I serve currently as the administrative pastor here at RLC.

And we are so excited to worship together.

And if this is your first time with us, a very special welcome to you.

I am not Pastor Brandon.

Pastor Brandon is our lead pastor, and he is actually out on sabbatical for the next several weeks.

And so we'll have some guest speakers, myself, Pastor Derek, and Brandon Gillam will all be speaking over the next several weeks as we start a new series.

And that series is going to be called One Church.

One church.

And there it goes.

Hey, boom, Tim's working with us.

One church.

And so there's so many things happening in our world today.

We are one church here at Real Life Church.

And a church, if you want to look at actually what a church is, a church is essentially a body of people, of Christians, and of disciples who come together to worship Jesus Christ.

That is what the local church is.

And then we have like big seed church, the global church.

And that is the bride of Jesus Christ.

And coming one day, don't know when that's going to be, but coming one day, Jesus Christ is going to come back and he is going to take his bride home to be with him.

And it's going to be an amazing, amazing time.

And so as we're one church, okay, then what exactly, how do we function in all of this kind of different things and different walks of life?

There's so many different things, actually, right now in the world, that can cause what's called disunity, right?

Unity inside of a church is a remarkably important thing.

It's an amazing thing when we actually look at it for what it is.

And so for the next four weeks or so, we're going to look at four different ways that we find unity as the body of Jesus Christ.

And so you can go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter two.

Verse 42 is going to be our main spot that we're going to hang out.

But Acts chapter two, and believe it or not, over the next four weeks, we're going to cover one verse.

One verse, right?

And if you think you're getting out early, you've never heard me speak, okay?

So just buckle in.

It's going to be a great time because it's not just going to be one verse, because guess what?

We're going to read the whole chapter today, and it's going to be awesome.

All right, because God's word is amazing.

This is not about any individual here.

This is not about any specific thing, but rather it is all about Jesus Christ here at RLC.

And so buckle in.

We're going to be in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Let's get after it.

All right, we're going to start in verse one.

It says, On the day of Pentecost, all the believers were meeting together in one place.

Suddenly there was a sound from heaven, like a roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

And then when they looked, uh, what looked like flames of tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them.

And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.

At that time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem.

When they had heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers.

They were completely amazed and said, How can this be?

They exclaimed.

These people are from Galilee, and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages.

Here we are, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and the Providence of Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and areas of Libya around Cyrene.

Visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism.

Cretans and Arabs and all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done.

They stood there amazed and perplexed.

What can this mean?

They asked each other.

But others in the crowd ridiculed them, saying, They're just drunk.

That's all.

Then people stepped forward with the then Peter, excuse me, stepped forward with the eleven other apostles and shouted to the crowd, listen carefully, all of you, fellow Jews and residents of Jerusalem, make no mistake about this.

These people are not drunk, as some of you are assuming.

Nine o'clock in the morning is much too early for that.

No, what you have predicted long ago by the prophet Joel in the last days, God said, I will pour out my spirit upon all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.

In those days I will pour out my spirit even on my servants, men and women alike.

And they like prophecy, they will prophecy, prophesy, and I will cause wonders in the heaven above all the sounds, uh, signs on the earth below, blood and fire and clouds and smoke, the sun will become dark, and the moon will turn blood red before the great and glorious day of the Lord arrives.

But everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

People from Israel, listen.

God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through him, as you well know.

But God knew what would happen, and his prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed.

With the help of the lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to a cross and killed him.

But God released him from the horrors of death and raised him back to life, for death could not keep him in its grip.

King David said this about him: I see the Lord is always with me.

I will not be shaken, for his right he is right beside me.

No wonder my heart is glad and my tongue shouts his praise.

My body rests in hope.

For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave.

You have shown me the way of life, and you will fill me with the joy of your presence.

Dear brothers, think about this.

You can be sure that the patriarch David wasn't referring to himself, for he died and was buried, and his tomb is still here among us, but he was a prophet, and he knew God had promised with an oath that one of David's own descendants would sit on his throne.

David was looking into the future and speaking of the Messiah's resurrection, and he was saying that God would not leave him among the dead or allow his body to rot in the grave.

God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this.

Now he is exalted to the place of the highest honor at heaven, at God's right hand.

And the Father, as he promised, gave him the Holy Spirit to pour out upon us, just as you see and hear today.

For David himself never ascended into heaven.

Yet he said, The Lord said to my uh said to my Lord, Sit in the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet.

So let uh let everyone in Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah.

Peter's words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles' brothers, What should we do?

Peter replied, Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

This promises to you, to your children, and to those far away, all who have been called by the Lord our God.

Then Peter continued preaching for a long time, strongly urging all his listeners, save yourselves from this crooked generation.

Those who believed that Peter said, uh what Peter said, were baptized and added to the church that day about 3,000 in all.

All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship and to the sharing in mills, including the Lord's Supper and to prayer.

A deep sense of awe came over them all.

And the apostles performed many miracle miraculous signs and wonders, and all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had.

They sold their property and their possessions and shared the money with those in need.

And they worshiped together at the temple each day.

They met in homes for the Lord's Supper, and they shared their meals with great joy and generosity, all the while praising God and enjoying the good will of all the people.

And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

Let's pray.

Our Father, God, thank you.

We thank you for bringing us to this place.

God, we worship you.

You are our desire, your goal is to lift your name high.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that you love us enough not to leave us where we're at, but rather you step into the messy places in all of life to simply see us grow closer to you, to grow in freedom that only you can bring.

Now, God, with each and every person under my voice, I pray blessing upon blessing.

Holy Spirit, we know you're here.

We feel you moving.

And now, Lord, take me out of it, and may your voice be heard.

God, we love you.

We're so thankful for all that you're doing in the holy and powerful name of Jesus Christ.

Amen and amen.

So we are one church.

We get a full chapter of the beginning of quote unquote the early church.

It's it's this amazing time where the Holy Spirit falls down on a group of people, and there's this flame of tongues, right?

And sometimes we we get scared about speaking in tongues here.

Hey, we're not diving into that today.

If you want to know thoughts on that, find me after.

I would love to talk with you about it.

It's a great, great thing that we get to talk about.

We hear about prophesying, we hear about visions, we hear about all these kind of confusing things, or at least they can be confusing.

There's all these different things that we're hearing in life.

How many of you have heard about aliens lately?

Just me?

Right?

A couple of chuckles, you've heard about them.

Right?

There's there's these different things that we're hearing about.

There's certain things that really need to be our primary concerns, and then there's secondary, tertiary, and then things that don't even matter, right?

Aliens, it's one of those things.

It doesn't change anything in the Bible.

Right?

There is nothing in the Bible that if aliens do exist and the government comes out, it just so happens that it all circulates around America.

But hey, it's okay.

That if aliens come out and there's this actual being, it doesn't change anything in the Bible for us.

Actually, I would I would even say it confirms things in the Bible.

Right?

There's rules that rulers and principalities of the air.

There's things in the Bible that actually point to these things.

There's things like what color the wall should be inside of a church building.

There's things like how loud the music should be or what style of music.

If you can't tell, I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, and there was what was called the worship wars, legitimate worship wars where churches would split based off the style of music that is there.

Can I tell you that's also not the first time that's happened?

That's happened multiple times through history, whenever there's this adjustment of how we the style of music that we use for worshiping God.

Okay, there's there's all these things that can cause disunity.

So then what do we do with them?

Well, I want to make a contention with you.

If you're here, you're probably one of three people.

Either, number one, you are a confessing believer of Jesus Christ and walking with him and walking as a disciple with him.

If that's you, first of all, I'm so glad you're here.

Because my hope is this is encouraging you to you.

The message today is encouraging.

It's not meant to be anything of condemnation or anything like that.

It's meant to be encouraging and hopefully going to give you some tools and resources to understand more about what we believe.

Maybe you're on the fence.

You are my favorite people.

I'm not gonna lie, I love you, disciples.

I love you.

But but the people on the fence that are just naturally skeptics, I love you because I am you.

And so my hope for you is that I can give some answers based on God's word to what the reality of what we're walking in is.

And then maybe you got dragged here by your Christian friend next to you.

I'm gonna let the cat out of the bag.

They're hoping that you give your life to Christ.

That's why you're here, okay?

But but if you're here and that's you and you just want nothing to do with Jesus Christ, again, I'm so glad you're here.

Because God's word is amazing.

And I'm gonna unpack what God's word really is because here's the goal.

As one church, we must be unified, we must remain unified in the Bible.

Let's let's look at this.

Chris, how in the world do you get that out of anything in Acts chapter two?

There's nothing actually saying, hey, that God's word, that the Bible is truly God's word.

It's inspired by God's word.

So how do you get that?

Well, let's look at chapter uh chapter two, verse 42.

It says all the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.

That's where we're stopping today.

The apostles' teaching.

So then, how in the world do we get the apostles' teaching in this?

Well, here's what's really cool Peter, who is one of the disciples of Jesus Christ, he walked with Jesus for about three years, right before Jesus was crucified and then resurrected from the grave.

We'll get there, trust me.

Well, we're we're getting to the credibility of Jesus.

You're getting a little apologetics today.

But wait, we have Peter who who there's all these weird things happening, and people are thinking that they're drunk and all these things.

I love Peter, he's just a brash guy.

I can relate a lot with Peter, but Peter just steps out and says, Hey, you, you messed up.

You crucified the Son of God, you crucified him, and guess what?

He's risen and he's he was buried and risen.

And guess what?

There is still redemption for you because God loves you.

It's awesome.

I love Peter.

So how do we get that?

Well, we see God's word on both the old and the new testament in this passage.

The first part, Peter actually quotes the prophet Joel.

And remind you, these are Jews that he is speaking to, primarily Jews in this area.

And the Gentiles that were here likely at least had a rudimentary knowledge of prophecy.

So he he quotes Joel directly, and then he quotes from the book of Psalms David, like two of the major prophets of the time, right?

He calls it out for what it is.

So he connects Jesus Christ to the Old Testament, and then he carries it on forward to what we see as the New Testament.

Now, if you're a skeptic like I am, I'm like, that's awesome, but how do we know that's actually what was written?

So, really quick, what I want to do here at Real Life Church, we are uh one unified church.

And so I want to let the cat out of the bag if you didn't already know this, our view of the Holy Bible.

There's different views of the Bible out there.

There are some people who would say it is the inspired and errant and infallible, meaning it cannot contain error.

It was inspired by the Holy Spirit, written through men, by men, that they did not lose agency or personality.

The Holy Spirit does not possess them, rather, he inspires them.

And since the Holy Spirit inspired them, that cannot contain error because God is the Holy Spirit is part of God.

And so we would say our official view is the Holy Bible and only the Bible is the authoritative word of God.

It alone is the final authority in determining all doctrinal truths in its original writing, it is inspired, infallible, and inerrant.

Those are other scriptures that we use to back that up.

This is actually on our website.

So if you didn't know, this is our view of the Bible.

We believe that it is the inspired, infallible, and inerrant word of God.

So then what exactly, how do we know though, that that this this is called an NLT version of the Bible?

This is a translation.

How do we know that this is as much as God's word as the original form?

Let's get into it.

Well, the first question uh is is are we followers of Jesus Christ?

Are we followers of Jesus Christ?

Because if we claim to be disciples the way that the Bible lays out disciples, that means that we must have the same view of the Bible, we must have the same view of morality, we must have the same view of sin as Jesus Christ did.

Otherwise, I would argue then you're not a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Okay, let's cut the tension in the air.

It's okay.

This is a hard one.

Right.

If if we claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ, that means we confess with our mouth.

It says in the book of Romans, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, then you are saved.

If you confess Him to be Lord, that word Lord there actually means Master.

So that means as disciples or followers of Jesus Christ, if we have a master, we must have the same view as the master.

So really quick, let me let me talk about Jesus for a second.

Because here's the thing about Jesus Christ either he is the son of God or he is a liar.

There's no in between.

Now, what I want to do really quick, I'm gonna have some fun.

Uh geek out with me for just a moment.

If this is not your jam, it should be.

That's okay.

Uh, it's helpful in life, I promise.

Okay, so is Jesus credible?

Is he credible that he would say that he that he can say that he is the son of God and there's enough evidence to back up what Jesus is saying?

Let's take a look.

So so there is this man, his name's Jesus.

He was born of what's called a virgin birth.

This is not disputed all through history.

It was a miraculous event that a baby was born from a woman is the only case that we have that a child was born without intercourse.

Okay, so we have a miraculous birth.

There are multiple times of prophecy said before Mary is alive that this is how the Son of God is gonna come, this is how the Messiah is gonna come, and God just lays it out for his people so that when this happens, we know, oh, there's something different about this guy.

Now, Jesus is both fully God and fully human.

This is a hard doctrine to understand.

So bear with me.

I know I'm going like Christianity 201.

Roll with me.

Jesus, since he is both God and human, what does that mean?

Okay, I can't understand this.

I'm a finite being, and I'm not the most intelligent guy in the world.

Okay.

But but what that means, but the but the best analogy I can have is you have a king, and what he does is he leaves his throne and he puts on normal civilian clothes, and then he walks along the line among the people, and he has to follow the same laws and physics as what that that the people have to follow.

It doesn't change his identity as God, but he has to deal with all these things.

So that means when Jesus leaves his throne, he has to then deal with things like temptation.

He has to deal with things like hurt.

He has to deal with all these different things.

And so we have this man, Jesus, who is born of a virgin.

He's fight, he has to deal with temptation, but the difference between us and him is Jesus never sins.

And so there's this thing called sin.

Sin is when we do something that isn't anything contrary to what God desires.

Okay?

Anything that God says is a sin in the Bible, we would consider a sin.

And so Jesus has all of these temptations, but he never falls to the temptation.

Rather, he fights against it with the word of God.

And so we have this completely clean person.

And there's this thing called sin, and before God, sin requires a sacrifice.

So Jesus being the perfect clean person, fully God, fully human, Jesus takes on that.

He dies on the cross.

And from what I can find, all the history and all the background I find, the Romans never messed up crucifying somebody.

There's not a single time in history where we have that I can find anyway that would say that the Romans got this one wrong and this person lived.

No, every time a crucifixion happens with the Romans, they die.

So there's no way that Jesus is alive to the point that they actually pierce his side and water and everything else flows out.

Jesus died.

He's buried in a grave.

And then the the Roman Empire is like, hey, we need to do something.

They put a legion of soldiers around the grave that nobody can get into the grave.

They put A miraculously heavy stone in front of the grave.

Well, three days later, what happens?

People show up.

The grave's empty, the stones rolled away.

Jesus isn't there.

But then, a few days later, over 500 people see Jesus Christ with their own eyes.

And we have eyewitness views.

So is Jesus credible through history?

Jesus is credible.

So then if Jesus is credible, that means we have to take what he says as God's word.

So here's what's awesome.

I love C.S.

Lewis.

If you if you never know that about me, C.S.

Lewis is amazing.

He says, Christianity, if false, is of no importance.

And if true, of infinite importance.

The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.

So Jesus is credible.

He is credible to be the Son of God.

That's amazing.

So then, if we're followers and disciples of Jesus Christ, how then do we use the Bible as our unifying factor?

Well, the first question to answer is how does Jesus regard the Bible?

If he is our master, we must have the same view as he does of the Bible.

So then what does he say about the Bible?

Let's take a look at it.

From the Old Testament point of view, Jesus references to the Old Testament.

In Matthew, there are 102 references to the Old Testament.

In Mark, there's 39.

In Luke, 68.

And in John, there are 49.

It is very clear that Jesus himself talks about the Old Testament as the Word of God.

If you need more proof, let's get after it.

All right.

Mark 7.13 says, thus, you will nullify the word of God, Word of God, by your tradition that you may have handed down.

The Bible trumps church tradition.

If we do something inside church tradition that is contrary to the Bible, the Bible takes the authority and precedence.

Church history does not, or church tradition does not.

The next one, I love this.

And then John 10, 35, he says, if he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be broken.

Scripture has full authority.

This is Jesus actually speaking to the disciples.

The next one, Matthew 22, 31 through 32, but about the resurrection of the dead.

So it's very clear Jesus holds the Old Testament in regard as the word of God.

So then that's great.

What about the New Testament?

Well, what does Jesus say about the New Testament?

John 14, uh 25 through 26 says, These things I have spoken to you while I was still with you.

But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all the things and bring you to bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

This the he is talking to the disciples here.

And Jesus says, Hey, hey, listen, I'm gonna send the Holy Spirit, and he's going to inspire you to write down what you say.

What have you seen?

That's why we have these things called the apostles.

There's a difference between a capital A apostle and like the action verb of being an apostle.

An apostle, the action verb, the apostle is going to a place and starting new churches that have never heard the Bible.

Okay, that's that's that's like the lowercase a the capital A are the disciples minus Judas and Paul.

You put Matthias in there if you want to.

Right?

So we have 13 apostles.

Part of the the precedence to be a part of the New Testament is you have to have apostolic secession, which simply means it has to have come from one of the apostles that physically saw Jesus Christ.

Whether that's through orientation and somebody's writing it down, that would be like Paul and Luke, oftentimes.

Or Mark with Peter.

That's where we get the gospel of Mark.

It's actually the gospel of Peter, but you know, Mark wrote it.

He gets a lot of credit.

He's a better writer than Peter, in all fairness.

Go read Mark and then go read first and second Peter.

Peter's a fisherman.

But we see this.

That Jesus Himself is saying, Hey, I'm gonna give you my word another one.

Luke 10, 16 says, The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.

The New Testament is God's word.

I actually love this in Galatians chapter 1, that Paul is writing to the church at Galatia, and he actually tells them, hey, if even an angel comes down and they give you another gospel, that is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Galatians 1 · chapter mention

Anything contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ is not truth.

Capital T truth.

And you can put in little exclamations, Mormons, uh, good old Joseph Smith, you got Islam uh with Muhammad.

We have all these different ones.

Anybody who comes and says they see an angel, especially like in a cave, they see an angel and they got this new gospel, this new truth.

Well, the Bible actually says that that is not the case.

We have everything we need inside of the Bible to know truth.

So then, really quick, I gotta hustle, man.

All right, uh first point.

We got three.

All right, so so then how do we know this is really what was said?

How do we actually know that what we have here in them from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, how do we know these are actually true?

How can we actually stand on these and stand firm in them?

Uh here we go.

We have 24,000 copies of the New Testament manuscripts.

24,000.

We have 10,000 plus 10,000 plus copies of the Old Testament.

These are dating back to within 50 years of the original authorship.

The closest thing to this is that I could find is the Iliad by Homer.

The Iliad by Homer, we have roughly, I think, 2,000, I think is what it is, 2,000, something like that.

And you know the time gap between the two is 400 years.

Now, this is sourced, okay?

This is from a guy named Norman Geisler, Dr.

Norman Geisler, an apologist.

He's he's awesome.

And so you can scan that QR code and I encourage you, go read about it because I ain't got time for that.

All right, so so then we we we see two different ways that we can really view all these things to say solidly that the Bible is God's word.

I encourage you, I implore you, never ever, ever take a preacher or pastor's uh word as the word.

Always back it up with the word of God.

Always ask them for sources.

If you ever ask Pastor Brandon from where he found stuff and all the sources, you will make his day.

Trust me, I've done it.

But we have two different ways.

So if you grew up uh in a Catholic world or you're under you know about Catholic, you may be asking a question, a valid question.

Why is it that they have 73 books, but we only have 66 books?

Well, I don't have time to get into it, so scan that QR code.

That's a quick podcast.

Uh, it's it's really good.

It's about 25 minutes, if I remember right.

He unpacks that really well.

Uh, and then Pastor Brandon himself, he actually has a full lesson on this online.

And so you can scan this QR code, and he actually gets further and deeper into the inerrancy of God's word.

So be sure, check those out.

Do your own research.

Guys, we live in the United States of America.

We are smart people.

Like we have access to all kinds of things.

We just don't use them because it's not easy.

Do the work, it's worth it.

Guys, we must remain unified in the Bible because the Bible is God's word.

Now, I know that was a little more academic and everything like that.

So, so we're gonna get into the meat of it now.

Now, here's the key: we find unity in God's word because our views are shaped by the Bible.

Our views are shaped by the Bible.

Because again, remembering that Jesus as our masters and we are followers of Him, He is our master, therefore, we follow with Him.

Well, God's word tells us what Jesus and God Himself thinks about things.

So here's what we're gonna do.

I want everybody to take a deep breath.

Because we're about to look at a bunch of pictures.

And I told Katie last night I'm probably gonna get in trouble for this.

They're meant to be emotionally charging.

Okay?

So every time you feel that emotion spike for a second, you feel that that redness in your face, I want you to take a breath.

Because it's gonna be okay.

You know, we we all have different views of things.

These guys.

Yeah, I don't know about the all.

Like he he is looking into your soul, ready to destroy you.

All right, Alabama football.

God's pray for our pastor.

He is an Alabama Crimson Tide fan.

God bless him.

Go Vols.

I don't get to say it very often.

All right, now now let's get serious.

Because the rest of these are actually legitimate, all right?

You may feel an emotion with these, and that's okay.

Take a breath.

And I'm just gonna go through them.

I'm not gonna say a word.

Uh, can I also send a disclaimer?

Um please guard your laughter here.

What we may think is funny, what you may think is funny, may not be funny to the person next to you.

These are legitimate things.

So please guard your laughter, okay?

We all have emotional thoughts towards each of these things.

This is why it's so important for us to have an objective truth that we can find unity in.

And that's the word of God.

The word of God helps us understand how to process through these things.

The word of God gives us a space to be able to say, hey, I have this thought and opinion about something, I have, and then another person have this thought and opinion about something.

But when we can actually detach from that emotion for just a moment to be able to pull back and look at, okay, but what does the truth of God's word say?

Now, likely through those images, we we hit everybody at some point in time.

Right?

Whether you uh lean on the side, one one side or the the other politically, whether you lead one side or the other on different hard to understand and hard topics to talk about, whatever those are, we probably have in this room a thousand different ways to look at those things.

But when we can say, hey, we we understand all those things in culture, we we know that those things are there, but we stand firmly on the word of God.

It allows us a space to be able to pull back and not have disunity within the church, but rather come to a table to have a conversation about a church with the goal of looking back at what does God say?

And we stand firm on that no matter our opinion.

Because here's the thing: our views and our opinions do not shape God's word.

God's word shapes our opinions and our views because we are not the Lord.

Jesus is Lord, therefore we follow what the Lord says.

I don't care your opinion.

Opinions are like armpits, everybody's got one, and most of them stink.

But God's word and God's opinion doesn't change and it hasn't through all of history.

And so now that we understand that we have a space that we can truly say, hey, this is the word of God, there's plenty of historical evidence saying that this is the word of God, that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and because it's inspired by the Holy Spirit, that means God said it.

God cannot err, meaning he can't get things wrong.

And when he says this, this is what we do.

That doesn't mean it's not hard.

If you can't tell, guys, I'm I can be hard-headed.

I'm a type A personality.

There's many times where I'll read God's word, and I was actually doing it through this message.

I'm reading God's word.

I'm like, God, I don't want to say that, I don't want to do that.

Because I like this over here.

This is comfortable.

Well, guys, growth and comfort never coexist.

And so our desire is to grow closer to God.

And when we grow closer to God, our views are shaped by the Bible.

What this allows us to do is when the Bible shapes our views, we can call sin as it is, and in turn, we see grace as freedom instead of condemnation.

When we see the Bible for what it really is, and when the Bible says a sin is a sin, and we're willing to step into that place and say, okay, God, whether I even agree at this moment or not, I'm willing to give you the leverage and you the space to form my thoughts and my sin and my views.

And when we can do that, the Lord's finally like, thank you.

I'm revealing this sin to you.

You know why?

Because there's grace in that sin, and from that grace comes freedom from that bondage of sin.

But we can only do that when we're here with the word of God.

Guys, we gotta be unified in the Bible.

I would actually argue, I was telling Katie last night, I would argue this is one of the biggest things right here.

If not the biggest doctrine, I would say it's one of the biggest.

Because it's the foundation on everything that everything else is built.

Meaning, if this is not true, if there's one thing wrong in this, then everything else, there's space for, oh well, it could be right, it could be wrong.

Now, if you if you're wondering why we have, you know, hundreds of translations of the word of God, find me after.

I don't have time to get into that.

It's a it's an amazing gift that we have.

There are there are really good translations.

I have a top four that I typically like.

Then there's some that not so much.

Because we have God's word.

Now, here's the thing.

We must study the Bible in order to know God.

We must study the Bible in order to know God.

If you have a feeling or an emotion about God, who God is, hey, that's great.

I think God works through emotions.

God created emotions, they are good things.

But emotions are meant to be check engine lights, not a steering wheel.

Because if your emotion or your thought about God does not align with the Bible, well, that may be a cool thought.

That's neat and all, but it's not, it may not be true.

So we always want to back up those emotions and thoughts about God with the word of God.

You know why this is important?

That we must study the Bible in order to know God.

God wants to be known rightly.

All right, so if I'm if I'm sitting, I'm gonna pick on Nick for a second.

If I'm sitting here talking to Nick Balanowski and we're having a conversation, I'm telling him about my wife.

And I tell her, hey Nick, man, I have this amazing wife.

She's six foot two, bright red hair, deep brown eyes, loves like black and bitter coffee.

And Katie, my wife, walks up behind me.

I can tell you, I'm probably at minimum getting a pop in the back of the head.

Because Katie's gonna be like, Who's this?

Who's my husband talking about?

That ain't me.

You know why?

Because my wife's about five foot five.

She has brown hair, bright green and blue eyes.

They go back and forth.

She likes a lot of creamer with a touch of coffee.

She she likes, uh, she used to like butter, uh, the butterfinger candies until they changed the recipe, and now they're not good.

She doesn't like those anymore.

She loves a good old Dr.

Pepper, you know, once a month.

And then my wife walks behind me.

She's probably gonna come up behind me and give me a big old hug.

Because I'm believing rightly about the woman that she is.

Guys, when we don't believe rightly about God, that may not be God.

That may be a figment of your imagination.

You're framing God as your own person.

God is God, God is true and he is right.

So we must study the Bible in order to know about God.

Guys, again, this is cultural.

We are in the United States of America.

Everybody has access to a Bible.

If you have a smartphone, which I think the percentage is like 99.2% of Americans have a smartphone.

If you have a smartphone, there's this thing called the Bible app.

If you can, if you can't afford a hard copy Bible, you have access whenever you need it.

And if you can't afford a Bible, guess what?

We have them for free out front.

It is an honor that we get to give Bibles because we want all of us to know about God, not just some of us.

We want to, we must study the Bible in order to know God.

Now, maybe you're saying, you know, I don't know how to study the Bible.

It's hard to understand.

Hey, I'm right there with you.

It's hard.

Have you ever read the book of Revelation?

You start reading, it's like, man, why are these things popping out of the ocean?

We got like 10-headed things over here.

What's going on?

Well, I would encourage you, join a life group.

Life groups are right around the corner.

We have our next summer semester coming up.

Today is our first day of uh life group previews.

And so you can look in the back behind the curtains.

You can stop out front.

You can ask questions at the welcome center.

You can scan this QR code.

But guys, the purpose of life groups are to do life together and to grow closer to God.

All of our life groups, we talk about God.

We pray.

We learn, and then we're in life with each other.

We are not a church with life groups, we are a church of life groups.

So to all the women out there, hey, a great way to grow closer to God and to know more about God is by coming to the women's nights.

Full disclosure, last week when I closed service, I gave a bad representation of what's happening on Monday, uh tomorrow for what I call the talent show.

It's not really a talent show for our women, it's actually an opportunity to come in and see the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given women inside of our church a time of worship as they push back darkness.

Like that's what we do when we worship.

We raise the name of Jesus, and when we raise the name of Jesus, darkness is pushed away.

That's what we're gonna do here.

Oh, y'all, I'm not a woman.

But be a part of that.

Come together.

You want to learn how to grow closer.

Get yourself around people smarter and more mature in their faith than you.

You want to learn how to pray.

Come to prayer night on Tuesday nights.

Join the women who pray if you're a woman.

Men, join the men's coffee group.

There's tons of others in between that.

There's there's no reason why we can't grow closer to God.

Or, hey, you don't know where to start in the Bible.

If you've been around RLC, that excuse doesn't work.

There are ample opportunities to learn about God and His Word.

And maybe you need a way to really just walk you through the Bible.

We can scan this QR code or text RLC Bible to 94,000.

Because you will then get a book or a chapter each day about what to read in the Bible.

And you're gonna get a text message in the morning.

Inside that text message, there are little links that you read, Leviticus 2, and you're like, what is happening?

Well, you go watch the Bible breakdown podcast that Pastor Brandon simply explains it.

He doesn't tell you necessarily what to do with it, he explains what's happening so that we can understand it better.

The excuse of not knowing what to read or not being able to understand it, guys, that goes away.

Because we have the opportunity to know God through his word.

Guys, we must be unified in his word.

We must be able to know and understand God's word together, and when we can't get it right, we always look to the word of God to point us in the right direction.

This is meant to be a how-to book in a mirror.

We look at God's word.

Hey, how how am I am I looking a little more like Jesus or am I looking like my own self again?

Guess what?

The Bible points you in that direction.

Hey, what should I think about this situation or this viewpoint or this political stance or whatever the case may be?

Hey, this gives direction.

Now that can only happen when we can pull ourselves out of it and we say Jesus is the point.

The whole point of the Bible is not us.

We are made in the image of God.

Absolutely.

We are important.

100%.

But we are not the point.

The point of humanity is to give God glory.

That's the point.

The point of the Bible is to bring glory to God.

Jesus Himself says, glorify.

I want to glorify you.

How we live does it point in that direction?

Well, we look at the Bible.

One of my favorite authors and pastors of all time is a guy named Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He says, Christian community is not an ideal which we must realize, it is a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.

Christian fellowship is not a spiritualizing fusion of souls, it is the fellowship under the word.

We come together and fall under God's word.

Because his word is good, it's true, and it's just.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when he's writing this, he was a pastor in the middle of World War II.

You know why he's one of my favorite?

If you can't tell, again, I'm type A.

I like masculine things.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he was both a pastor and a spy.

He actually was a part of a ring that was trying to take out Adolf Hitler because Adolf Hitler is evil.

I love me some Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Jokers, no joke.

He says, all those things, those are cool.

But we must fall under the word of God.

Guys, we are one people.

We are one church.

We are unified under one Bible.

So maybe you're wrestling with some things, and my hope again for you, if you've been a Christian for a long time, my hope for you is that you're encouraged by this, that we do have something that we can stand on and stand under, and that is the word of God.

And now you have a little bit of historical evidence, a little bit of apologetics to go back and have a conversation with somebody.

Maybe today's the first day you've ever heard the name of Jesus Christ.

Man, he saves.

He brings freedom to our lives.

So here in just a moment, we're gonna have a time of response.

And when we sing this last song, we are not singing to you guys.

You are not singing to us.

We are not here as a concert.

Rather, we are here to lead others into the throne room of Jesus Christ.

That's what we get to do.

And so maybe that throne room for you just needs to look like you come and just lay it down before the Lord.

Maybe you need to go back to our prayer table.

We have some awesome prayer warriors here at RLC.

And it is an honor that we get to pray together because when we pray together, we're getting in the fight together.

We're putting shield on shield so that nothing can break through that.

The enemy has no control.

And Jesus has won that.

So here in just a moment, we're gonna have a time of response.

And I encourage you, I implore you, don't leave today the same way you left.

The way you came in is not the way Jesus wants you to leave.

We've changed forever for him.

Let's pray.

Our Father, God, thank you.

Thank you for this day.

We thank you for an opportunity to enter into your house.

And God, we give you all glory in this house.

Now, Holy Spirit, as you are speaking and moving, Lord, we trust you.

We give you the space to do as you see fit and as you need to do.

Now, Lord, I pray for that person who's just kind of wrestling back and forth.

That you will speak to them, that they will surrender and submit to you and you alone.

Lord, steady our souls, silence our minds as we enter into worship of you.

Now, God, as as as again, you're still moving, you're still speaking.

Lord, we surrender to you.

We give you all that we are and all that we do.

God, you are King.

Jesus, you are Lord, you have risen again.

God, be with us in your holy and powerful name.

Amen.

If you would go ahead and stand all across the room for me.

Like I said, this is a time of response.

We have the opportunity that we are before the Lord, that we can come and lay it all down for Him.

Let's worship today.